China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) has formally issued a document to the country’ s big three operators – China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom – clearly stating that the "mobile number portability commercial trial" will be launched on November 22 in the cities of Tianjin and Hainan. This means that number portability will probably be widely available soon.
What it means is that even if you switch providers you can still keep the same mobile number.
The telephone companies are not resisting change. Since January 2009, the three operators have been working on internal network reconfiguration and technical commissioning, and have also conducted inter-operability testing under the auspices of the MIIT.
TMC.Net.com said the MITT has announced that mobile portability will go nationwide "at the proper time."